The invention of literacy led to the production of documents. Shortly thereafter, the need to maintain information security was noticed. Early efforts at maintaining information security included limiting the number of literate people. In more modern times, literacy is widespread and information security is maintained, in part, by limiting document distribution. Documents have been given security levels such as confidential, secret, top secret, and eyes only to indicate who may access the document. Some levels of document security are administrative rules within organizations whereas others are legal requirements. HIPAA requires certain security measures for people's medical records. There are similar legal requirements for the financial data and reports of publicly traded corporations. Likewise, government documents are often classified within one of numerous security levels and unauthorized access or distribution of those classified documents can lead to criminal charges.
Maintaining information security by limiting the distribution of documents has become difficult with the widespread availability of printers, scanners, facsimile machines, and multi-function devices (“MFDs”) because it has become so trivial to create electronic or physical copies. In order to preserve information security, copies of documents must be subject to the same controls as the originals. Systems and methods for securing information and documents in the presence of printers, scanners, facsimile machines, and MFDs are needed.